EFF Teaches Barney The Dinosaur An Expensive Lesson In Fair Use

from the happy-now? dept

The folks behind Barney, the purple dinosaur TV character, have a long history of not quite understanding copyrights and fair use, as they tend to send out cease & desist letters at the drop of a hat, even if there's no actual violation. In fact, they sent so many to one person who had an online Barney parody site (parody is protected by fair use, remember) without actually suing him, that he (along with the EFF) finally sued Barney's owners back. It seems that this little sing-a-long lesson in copyright and fair use finally made sense to the stuffed dinosaur, who not only has agreed to stop sending out cease & desist letters to the guy, but also will pay for his legal bills in defending himself. Are we all a happy family now?

funny...

About 10 years ago there was a file going around about how Sesame Street was a million times better than Barney and one of the things on it was that on one episode Barney basically humiliated a child for not wanting to share something whereas on SS, they simply said the child had that right and while it was cool to not share, there were benefits to sharing.